New year rhymes with new life for more than 2,000 newborns in France. Around 2,081 children were born on January 1, 2018 in France. “Newborns in France will represent 0.53% of the 385,793 babies to be born in the world on this first day of the year”, specifies the United Nations organization for children.
Christmas Island, located in one of the archipelagos of Kiribati, in the South Pacific, welcomed the first baby of the year 2018, and the United States, the last of the day, specifies Unicef which draws up a comparative table of births in different countries around the world:
In India, there were 69,070 births on January 1, 2018. In China, 44,760 births and in the United States 11,280 while they will be 8,370 in Bangladesh.
Unicef is taking advantage of these figures to raise awareness at the start of the year about the issue of newborn health while still too many children in the world do not survive the first day of their lives.
Mortality at birth still too high in some countries
2,600 babies died every day within 24 hours of their birth in 2016, Unicef recalls. For about two million newborns, their first week was also their last. In all, 2.6 million children around the world did not survive their first month of life that year. The causes of death of these babies are in 80% preventable, whether related to prematurity, complications duringchildbirth or infections such as sepsis and pneumonia.
“UNICEF’s resolution for this new year is to give each child more than an hour, more than a day, more than a month of life, that is, in a word, life and not survival. “, explains Sébastien Lyon, Executive Director of UNICEF France.
While the proportion of newborns who die before reaching their 28th day of life still represents 46% of deaths of children under 5, Unicef is announcing an awareness campaign from next February. Objectives: “to demand and provide affordable and quality health solutions for each mother and each newborn” through various means “the continuous supply of water and electricity to health establishments, qualified assistance at birth, disinfection of the umbilical cord, breastfeeding in the first hour after birth and the practice of skin to skin between mother and child ”. And to challenge the public authorities: “We call on all governments and our partners to join our action which aims to save the lives of millions of children by means of proven and inexpensive solutions.”
Our New Year’s resolution is …#ForEveryChildpic.twitter.com/11kn6H28nH
– UNICEF (@UNICEF) December 31, 2017
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